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Author Topic: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?  (Read 5558 times)

vertinox

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How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« on: March 06, 2012, 01:18:27 pm »

Say if I had a hallway lined with large serrated discs... Would they kill the undead or just lop off their body parts which will come back to life?

Could menacing spikes kill the undead as well?

Or would I be looking at a hallway of blunt objects to break their bones?

I guess what would be the best strategy? Use discs to chop up zombies and then atom smash them or pit them near door?  Or should I  use a hallway lined of cage traps after the zombies make it through the weapon traps?

i2amroy

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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2012, 01:26:38 pm »

Cage traps are the best hands down since they allow for safe transport of the undead to your given method of disposal. Of the other methods, spikes come in for last place because undead no longer bleed or need their organs, making piercing damage pretty useless against them. For the last two, blunt and slicing both have their advantages/disadvantages. For blunt they are less likely to kill an undead creatures, however if the creature decides to come back to life then it is still in one big piece (also allowing for faster disposal). For cutting it is much better at killing undead, or at least severely limiting their danger. However cutting also create more pieces, allowing many more undead parts to be created.

So in short
1)Cage=best
2)Spikes=worst
3)Blunt~Cutting, just depends whether you want to deal with 1 dangerous zombie or a million semi-harmless animated body parts.
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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2012, 01:50:14 pm »

Since few if any undead wear armor or clothing (that I've seen), I've found that 10-15 traps of 10 large spinning green glass discs, combined with a dodge trap into lava kills all but 2-3 zombies in a wave, even with the necromancer raising them...

To kill the stragglers I just built an atomsmasher at the bottom of them.

I've also seen plenty zombies just explode when hit with a weapon trap like that, and I didn't see anything get up from that either .

Of course this is all totally different in an evil biome, where the parts will be raised time and time again.

Summary:

Slicing traps explode zombies. If you're sure they're going to get up afterwards, from a necromancer or evil biome, don't use cutting traps. Otherwise, it's a fine if messy way to dispose of them.

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NecroRebel

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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2012, 01:52:59 pm »

I guess it depends on how rapidly your corpses reraise themselves. If it takes a while, it's probably best to use cutting traps so most of the pieces are small and easily transportable to your corpse-destruction or permanent safe storage area. If it's fast, blunt traps are probably best so only a single hauler is endangered when they go to drag away the body. It probably also depends on how many haulers you have, since creating a half dozen legs, ears, noses, and other parts that won't animate again might delay moving those that will reanimate if you don't have enough ready haulers.

Overall, cage traps are probably superior. Undead don't tend to come in large groups except when a tower sieges you unless you've not been clearing them, so the cages' single-shot nature isn't too big a problem.
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Castamere

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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2012, 02:01:42 pm »

Spiked balls are hand down the only option for dodge-me traps
On my 3 weapon trap catwalk the first trap gets 90% of zombies into the abyss and never clogs.
Which then drop 30 zs down onto a magma filled pool
But you can easily make atomsmashers at the bottom

Large serrated disks are really crappy(tested since I love them) since they produce gazillion of reanimatable body parts and they clog on the second zombie that comes through

Spiked balls=never worry about that 100 zombie infestation on the surface, they go through them like butter
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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2012, 03:26:12 pm »

So in short
1)Cage=best
2)Spikes=worst
3)Blunt~Cutting, just depends whether you want to deal with 1 dangerous zombie or a million semi-harmless animated body parts.

Dealing with a million harmless body parts is a lot easier than dealing with a single large zombie bob. The problem comes with jamming...
Menacing spikes don't jam.
Cage traps are OP, except in evil biomes :P

vertinox

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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #6 on: March 07, 2012, 12:50:56 pm »

With the dodge into the pit trick, is there any reasonable way to make it 3 wide to allow it to be so caravan wagons can get in or am I going to have to put it further back where I got only 1 square and the only way to doge is into the pit?

slothen

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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #7 on: March 07, 2012, 01:07:34 pm »

With the dodge into the pit trick, is there any reasonable way to make it 3 wide to allow it to be so caravan wagons can get in or am I going to have to put it further back where I got only 1 square and the only way to doge is into the pit?

simple way is to just make another entrance with bridges right?  although with wagons now you get the 'bypassed' message, so i guess the wagons don't just wait around for you to lower the bridge.

As for dodging with a three wide trap, it should work, it just won't be as effective.  You'll need a much longer causeway with lots of traps to get creatures to dodge as much as possible.  Put lots of bends in the causeway so that creatures will always path along the edge.  Perhaps even a multi-z-level spiral staircase with dodge traps along the inside.
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vertinox

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Re: How effective are weapon traps against the undead?
« Reply #8 on: March 07, 2012, 01:41:02 pm »

Ok, the way I have it visualized now is if I just put it put it behind the trade depot as a last resort to dealing with the undead and just let the caravan die (bonus if they are elf).

Some more questions about the undead though...

If I am dealing with just the necromancer invasion on a normal biome, he can only raise dead in his line of sight right? So if I put my refuse, corpse, and tombs indoors (lined with cage traps just in case) they shouldn't be able to raise the dead from there, right?

But if I am on a evil biome, then chances are they will just raise on their own?